yesterday i did a quick tally of my cycling this year, and it looks like
i rode between 2700 and 4000km (26km 'standard trip', never less than
twice a week but more commonly 3-4 times, all year round).

The current wanking draft for HTML5, section 8.2.2.2
translates into the W3C saying 'standards are a good thing, but we
are clairvoyant and know better than all of you, so fuck them standards and all
the people actually relying on standards compliance!'

Dear W3C, when I label material as being encoded in iso-8859-1
then I MEAN ISO-8859-1 and
not smart-shite-infested windows-1252, thank you very much.

Your oh-so-helpful labelling of this mess a 'willful violation, motivated by
a desire for compatibility' motivates me to shoot you all on sight.

I've got these Ikea spice racks in my kitchen, and the way I installed them
they needed to be fastened to the wall for stability. I didn't want to
drill the tiles, however.

Once again my answer is "recycling": I habitually salvage the magnets
from dead hard drives. The spice rack is coated steel, the magnets are pretty
strong and so I simply glued a bunch of them onto the tiles. Silicone
sealant makes a decent glue for operations like that, and it's removable
if need be. Problem solved.

I like gumtree quite a bit: it's free
for private ads, no registration required, simple email-based access and
best of all it works. When my nephew visited we needed a car seat for
him, and the
second ad I responded to worked out. Now that Emil is back in Vienna the
seat is surplus.
I posted an ad two days ago, had four responses within 24 hours and sold the seat today (for the same amount as I paid two months ago). Very nice.

I just hope ebay (who own gumtree via some subsidiary nowadays) don't stuff
this service up...

One week ago: I detect a leaking hose under the bathroom wash basin.
Fortunately it was only the fitting that needed to be screwed on a little
tighter.

Sunday: the water filter (under-sink twin system, in the kitchen) is
leaking badly.
Repair attempts showed that the plastic filter housings had developed cracks
and were about to start spraying water big-time.

Sunday, part 2: So I bunkered some 20l of filtered water in a
plastic water bladder, just to tide me over until the filter was back
in operation. However, the collapsible water canister has also suffered a
puncture and leaked almost as badly as the filter.

Monday: I checked with the original supplier of the kit (7 years later, and the
local company is still thriving, a good sign) and it turns out that the cheap
filter housings that I ordered in 2004 should be replaced every 5 years or
thereabouts. I ordered the (marginally pricier) premium housings on Tuesday,
got them on Wednesday and all is well again.

I heartily endorse PSI Filters:
they are local(-ish: Tasmanian), their prices are good, and their advice and
customer service are great.